How can you, as a parent, best support your children to participate in the online world today? As parents, we didn’t grow up in a world surrounded with technology and wifi and therefore are adapting to our children’s online interactions. How much is too much and how can you best monitor this situation?

The GWA Counseling Department is putting on a parent workshop to highlight the importance of digital citizenship and communication in the online world. In this workshop, you will:

Recognize the importance of connecting the relationship between digital natives (students) and digital immigrants (parents)

Explore a variety of resources and research regarding digital citizenship and online safety.

Create a parent and family home plan in order to improve the online relationship in the home environment.

The workshop will take place on Tuesday, January 19th from 6:30-8:30 pm in the Teacher Training Room. The workshop has limited attendance and sign up is essential HERE.

Skype is a positive tool while living overseas. It allows us to communicate with our families and loved ones in our home country and various international settings. Being able to connect to those who are important to us in a simple, face-to-face manner, makes living away from home a more pleasurable experience.

While there are many positive aspects to using Skype at home, it is important to understand the rules and regulations to ensure that is it not misused by your child. Firstly, Skype’s website and software are not intended or designed to attract users under the age of 13 and therefore recommended that students under the age of 13 do not have a personal account. Skype is not required for learning at school or at home, nor is it a requirement in the Grade 5 Bring Your Own Educational Device Program. While students may think it is a trend to communicate with their peers on Skype, it is easy for them to become vulnerable to inappropriate conversations or dangerous relationships. Intel Security recommends the following guidelines in your home for children 13 and over when using Skype:

The digital life can be challenging when maintaining a parenting connection with your child. As a parent, it is important to know about your child’s online interactions- who does your child communicate with online and what applications or social networks are they using? Your child’s online social skills are just as critical as their offline people skills. The reality for children today is that their online reputation will someday determine their university admission and possible future employer. Talking to your children about their cyber life has to take place on a regular basis whether it is a short conversation in the car on the way to school or at the dinner table. Building a relationship of communication and trust at home will empower them to make positive decisions in the cyberworld. Offline parenting skills are critical in helping your child make critical choices. Sue Scheff from the Offline Parent Toolkit suggests to refer to the acronym CHAT:

C: Communication is keyH: Help is always a call or a text awayA: Action plans: talk to your child about an action plan when they are not feeling safe online. You are your child’s advocate for online safety. T: Treat others as you want to be treated in real life and on the internet.

You don’t have to be a social media expert or a tech-geek to connect with your child’s online life; just being your caring self each day will connect you to what is important.

Resetting and maintaining media rules at home is an important part of a new school year, especially after an extended summer holiday. It may sound daunting at first, however it can be very worthwhile especially when your children are involved in the process of conversation. Firstly, together with your child, visualize a 24 hour day as an empty glass. Start by filling the bottom of the glass with the essentials such as sleep, school, homework, activities, family time, playing outside etc. This way, you are not visually restricting your child’s media time, rather allowing them to expand and control how they are experiencing their day. It is important to frame the dialogue in a way where your children understand that they are preserving their daily essential life activities rather than cutting them off from the virtual world. Being a part of this experience will allow your child to visualize and understand the essential activities that take place in their daily life.

Welcome Back! As we transition into another school year and begin to take part in new routines, it is time to remember the importance of technology etiquette. We know that computers, iPads and smartphones can enhance our lives in many ways. However, when these devices are not used wisely and safely in the correct environments, we can often leave the wrong impression to those around us. Starting this year, the morning drop off zone in the gymnasium is a technology-free zone. Students have ten to fifteen minutes each morning to line up with their classmates in order to arrive at class together. During this time we encourage students to interact together using face-to-face communication. The use of computers, iPads and smartphones is not permitted. Let’s start the day on a friendly positive note! Technology will be permitted as a learning resource throughout the day in dedicated learning areas facilitated by a teacher.

Where are your technology free zones in your home? What rules and regulations does your family have regarding technology this year? Steven Woda, CEO and advocate from uKnow internet mobile and security, can assist you in identifying your family’s tech-free zones. In addition, the Family Online Institute offers family online safety contracts in order to establish safe ground rules and etiquette for positive technological experiences.

As the countdown to summer is right in front of us, it is common for parents to brainstorm ways to keep their kids active. More importantly, parents often wonder how to prevent their children from losing their reading and writing skills during the break. Caroline Core, parental editor from Common Sense Media, suggests the following tips in order to prevent “the dreaded summer slide”:

Keep kids reading and make summer reading fun. Kids who read over the summer are prepared for all subjects.

Most importantly, remember it is beneficial for kids have unstructured time throughout the summer, even if they get bored. Downtime is the beginning of creativity and imagination which is an essential skill they will use all of their lives. Don’t worry about keeping them occupied at all times- summertime offers a great connection to exploration and creativity.

Have you ever asked yourself if computer screen time affects your child’s sleeping patterns? Recent studies suggests that having a television, computer or mobile phone in a child’s bedroom causes anxiety and prevents sleep therefore affecting school academic performance. Psychologist Dr. Jennifer Vriend, of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada suggests that one of the biggest culprits for inadequate and disturbed sleep is technology. She notes that many teenagers sleep with their phones and are awakened regularly when they get a text, email or Facebook message. Further, the Journal of Pediatric Psychology warns that losing as little as an hour’s sleep can ruin a child’s performance at school. Thinking again where to place your computer, television and game consoles in your home? Your child’s bedroom is definitely not the place.

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Finding time for reading among the balance of digital distractions can often be a challenge. Encouraging focused reading time can take place with both original paper books or ebooks. In order for reading habits to take place, it is important to turn off the television, computer, or cell phone and instill family reading routines into your daily lifestyle. Common Sense Media offers some advice to make reading more of a habit in your family:

Communicating with technological devices in the world today is simple; how we participate in the communication is extremely important. Whether you are a digital immigrant (parent) or a digital native (student) your relationship to devices and technology is going to be very different. As adults, our way of modeling the behavior to our children is increasinglyinvaluable. Moreover, it is important that our children see where, when, and how we use technology and our devices.

The Family Online Safety Institute has created Family Online Safety Contracts: for both parents and children. Sit down together with your children and make a commitment to use safe habits with technology. Doing so will allow you and your child to understand the importance of ground rules and will promote your children to make safe technological decisions independently because they witness you modeling it along the way.

There is a safety mode to help screen inappropriate content you would not want your children to come across. This safety mode can be found and turned on at the bottom of any YouTube page.

When videos are uploaded on Youtube, they become open to the public by default. If users would like the videos to be private, they must select the privacy setting which can only be seen by the person who uploaded them. Unlisted videos are only viewable to people who have the link. All privacy settings can be altered before or after the video upload.

Youtube offers parent resources that cover online harassment which can help parents manage what their children are watching.